


Wanderer

by sunryder



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Stiles' Grandfather - Freeform, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2229549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I have seen worse plans, you know.”</p><p>“Somehow I can’t imagine that’s possible.”</p><p>Given that Stígandr was watching his grandson, his Stiles, bleed to death, Embla couldn’t really argue that with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> So, tumblr deceived me as to what Teen Wolf is actually about. This fic is apparently what happens when I try not to get emotionally involved and end up wishing that everyone got a happy do-over.
> 
> ETA: Minor corrections for clarity. This is why I'm never again allowed to edit a fic after midnight.

“I have seen _worse_ plans, you know.”

 

“Somehow I can’t imagine that being possible.”

 

Given that Stígandr was watching his grandson—the last of his ancient and honorable line—bleed to death, Embla couldn’t really argue that with him.

 

Stiles and the dregs of his reckless little pack had chosen to make their last stand at their Nemeton, thinking that perhaps the stump might give them the boost they needed to survive the night. It was a damn fool thing to do since they were fighting a Dark Druid, but the Nemeton had had shown them mercy before, so it wasn’t entirely ridiculous to hope that perhaps it might do so again. In fact, Stígandr was surprised at just how hard the Beacon Hills Nemeton was fighting for the children scrambling to survive around its roots.

 

Had things gone a bit differently, Stígandr could see how Stiles would have made an excellent Emissary. After all, the best of their kind had a strong bond with local Nemeton, but that was something that few Druids had the spirit to achieve. It would have been difficult for Stiles given how wild and unbalanced the boy’s Nemeton had gotten, but he could feel the power lashing out from the stump, struggling to pump whatever it could into Stiles’ fading heart. The Nemeton didn’t want the boy’s death, didn’t want his unintentional sacrifice. It would accept his blood, of course, but perhaps with time Stiles and his Nemeton might have had something like the relationship Stígandr had with his own Nemeton, with the both of them sitting together, silently watching as his grandson bled out in the arms of a Werewolf.

 

Embla was, and had always been, his family’s Nemeton. His line had stood beside her back when she was nothing more than a tree, nearly as feral as the one now in Beacon Hills. Their loyalty to her gave her strength, gave her the stability to take on a human form when so many Nemeton could do little more than collect power. In truth, it was Embla who had convinced him to let Stiles’ mother, Klaudia, leave home. To let her travel the wide unknown and settle half a world away with the small-town sheriff she fell in love with.

 

At a moment like this Stígandr wondered what it was Embla had thought she’d seen in the future that she was willing to let Stígandr’s heir leave her behind. If perhaps she’d thought that Stiles would return to her someday, bringing with him all the vibrant energy of his reckless little pack, livening things up for their highly structured part of the supernatural world. Stígandr couldn’t imagine that she had seen the only grandson he had never known—the last of his family, the last of her chosen line of Emissarys—bleeding out in the dirt while an orphan Werewolf cradled his body and begged him to keep breathing.

 

There was no point though.

 

No matter how the little wolf pled, Stiles would still be dead.

 

It was then that—quite unexpectedly—the Wolf said their name. The name Stígandr’s daughter had passed to her son. The name the Sheriff used on those dark nights when his boy could not make himself breathe.

 

There was power in a name. Even more when a name had been willingly shared. Which is what Stígandr could only assume Stiles had done since the magic of the word passing the Werewolf’s lips twisted around the puddle of his blood that was seeping in to the dirt and the Nemeton began to glow.

 

Embla hmmed. “Well that’s interesting.”

 

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Stígandr demanded, without taking his eyes off his grandson. If the Nemeton chose to spare the child, he didn’t want to miss it.

 

“This? No. I knew she was fond of the little Druid, but I did not anticipate this. Of course, It has been a particularly long time since I’ve been around one of my fellow Nemeton who happens to be quite so…”

 

“Feral?”

 

“I was going to say sensitive.”

 

“Of course you were. And what exactly is the Nemeton’s sensitive disposition doing to my grandson’s body?” Because Stiles, Stiles was glowing. Not just physically, but magically as well. If Stígandr’s long experience hadn’t told him it was quite impossible, he would’ve said that the Nemeton was pouring every ounce of its strength into Stiles rather than accepting his sacrifice for what it was.

 

Embla sunk to her knees. Not in deference to the scene before them, but to get a better look at the magic dancing across Stiles’ skin as his red-eyed Wolf snarled at any creature who came too close.

 

Stígandr could explain the Beacon Hills Nemeton’s fascination with Stiles, since someday he would’ve been her Druid. But Embla’s fascination, that he could not explain. He kept himself from asking too many questions since her interest meant she used her strength to pry into the goings on in Beacon Hills. Stígandr got a little twitchy about things when other Druids mentioned that the other Nemeton who had followed Embla’s example and were spying on Stiles as well, but he supposed he just ought to be grateful that they weren’t sharing what they saw with their Druids the way Embla shared with him. The part of him that would always be a father ached to know what it was that had the eldest of the Nemeton so interested in his grandchild, but the part of him that would always belong to magic knew better than to ask an ancient magical being why it did anything.

 

Embla crouched opposite the Wolf, looking down at Stiles and murmuring under her breath words in a language so old that no Druid had ever known it. Stígandr felt the pull of magic in his bones, in his blood, in his very breath. It rumbled beneath his feet, cracking branches as Embla stretched her roots deeper into the earth for all the strength she could find.

 

Beyond her, Stígandr could see the faded images of other Nemeton appearing—not that he had ever had the right to see any of their personifications as he had with Embla. From their looks he could guess which one was which. One seemed nothing more than a wisp of smoke, while another seemed to be steam, another ash, another paint, and another ink. Five plus Embla, men and women and everything in between, beauty that words could not describe. Or, would not have been able to if he wasn’t distracted by them taking up places in a star with Stígandr’s grandson at its center. Flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, with seven Nemeton surrounding his corpse and the two most beloved of his pack hunched over his body.

 

And Stígandr the Younger, the boy better known as Stiles, was glowing white, like a fallen star.

 

Stígandr liked to think he was a clever man, but when faced with such a moment of unbelievable magic the only thing he could think was, “But Stiles isn’t a virgin.”

 

Without looking away from the boy Embla murmured, “How unforgivably Christian of you, my dear. A virgin is always nice, yes. But it has never been about sexual purity.”

 

“I know that!” It was Druidism 101. Virgin sacrifices had strength because sex in the first place could be a powerful connection—emphasis on _could_ , some Druids never quite understood that the better the sex the more powerful the magic turned out to be. There was extra power when virginity was on the line because sex was new, and because when it was done properly a virgin’s response to sex was the magical equivalent of a bomb, not because of any extra purity on the virgin’s part.

 

Stígandr knew all that, but Embla did not seem in the mood to indulge his desire to get to the point so he could understand exactly what unprecedented magic was occurring here. “As reliant as we have become on the power of a virgin sacrifice, there is something far more powerful about a sacrifice made in love. A man laying down his life for the ones he loves, and who love him in return. Be they his almost lover, his chosen brother, or his mother’s father.” Embla’s eyes passed over the trio grouped around Stiles, gathering together their strength and channeling it in to the light shimmering over Stiles’ skin. Somehow Stígandr had stepped forward to join their circle, placing his hands on the Wolf’s shoulders without noticing.

 

“Under other circumstances,” she murmured, “it might have been a bit better if the little Druid and his Wolf had been lovers for years and were sacrificing that bond, but this Nemeton is no fool. It knows that Scott would have been his best friend until they died of old age, and it knows that you never would have set eyes on the boy without my interference, so there is only so much power to be gained from that knowledge. But in the Wolf, oh in the Wolf there lies the strength of the bond that might have been if they would have come together. All the fire and devotion that would have roared between them, all that young Stígandr gave up to save his lover’s life. His pack. There is a strength in that too.

 

“Of course, it certainly helps things that he is a Druid who laid down his life for a Werewolf, a boy who might have been an Emissary if he ever had the chance to come in to his gifts giving up the life for the Alpha he would have aided.”

 

The world began to fade around Stiles, drowned out by his brightness. “Embla?” Stígandr stuttered. Because even stranger than the magic unwinding around Stiles, was how Stígandr could feel the link binding him to Embla unraveling. He had been born amongst her roots, climbed to her highest branches, been taken by his first lover in her sight, spread his parent’s ashes, conceived his only child, and planned to spend his eternity in her soil. But his tie to her, a tie that bound him to Embla even while his daughter died halfway around the world, came undone.

 

Stígandr had half a breath to see Embla blow him a kiss goodbye before the world erupted in light.

 

When his sight came back to him after the onslaught of brightness, Stígandr couldn’t quite believe the moment magic had brought him to. What moment they chosen to bend the laws of time and space to have him fix. Later he would realize it made sense, since the death of the teenaged girl currently wrapped in the Wolf’s arms was what had brought the Beacon Hills Nemeton back to life in the first place.

 

But at this moment, there Stígandr was, staring at a face unlined and back unbowed by cares the Wolf before him was ill trained to handle. But those eyes, Stígandr would always recognize those eyes. Stígandr had just seen them moments ago weeping over his last lover as he was now weeping over his first. And Stígandr would not squander this chance to never see them look that way again.

 

Stígandr slipped the dying girl from the little Wolf’s shaking arms, limbs too weak from grief and rage to stop him from taking the burden that had changed everything out the Wolf’s own life, the lives of his pack, and the boy who called himself Stiles. “Come now, young Mr. Hale. Someday you will have to shed blood to protect your pack, but today is not that day.” Derek let loose a choked sob, and Stígandr ran his palm across the girl's eyes, soothing away her pain as he eased her passage into death. If he had been a better man he would've remembered the girl's name, but at it was, he was more concerned with sparing Derek the ripped soul and blue eyes that came from believing you'd killed an innocent. 

 

Soon enough Stígandr would try and understand just what magic the various Nemeton had come together to do so they might rewrite the world and keep Stiles in it. But at this moment, Stígandr laid down the girl’s body amongst the waiting roots and pulled Derek into his arms, giving what comfort he could to his future in law.  

**Author's Note:**

> FYI, Stígandr means 'wanderer' in Old Norse, while Embla means 'elm'. Specifically, in Norse mythos Embla was the first female created by the gods, and she was carved from an Elm tree.


End file.
